Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
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This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight . . .
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate an-
swers the wail of the forest.
—Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie,
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
THESE FAMOUS OPENING
lines of one of the best-known and most beloved American poems of the 19th century
allude to a forest that today we would describe as old growth. The clearing of land for agriculture, intensive log-
ging, and epidemic fire and pestilence followed closely upon European colonization of eastern North America,
and only a few small patches of these ancient trees, “bearded with moss,” can be found today. It is estimated
that, when Europeans arrived, two-thirds of the continent was covered with old-growth forests. But by the
middle of the 19th century, crops and pastures covered nearly three-quarters of the arable land in southern and
central New England. Although today the proportions are exactly reversed, since farmland has been abandoned
in the last two centuries, the forests are younger and in most instances composed of different proportions of spe-
cies than the “forest primeval.”
Two major biomes—large regional groupings of plants that have the same climax vegetation and share a sim-
ilar environment—meet in the area centered on the Gulf of Maine. Here the temperate broadleaf and mixed
forest, which extends from the Great Plains to the Atlantic coast, and from the Gulf of Mexico to Maine, meets
the boreal forest, which sweeps across the northern half of the continent. The former is characterized largely by
deciduous trees, which shed their leaves in the fall, and the latter by conifers, or evergreens.
The boreal forest is largely dominated by the spruces (white, black, and red) and balsam fir, which are toler-
ant of short growing seasons and are hardy enough to survive temperatures that can dip to -40°C (-40°F). Many
of these evergreens can also tolerate nutrient-poor and waterlogged soils. To the south is a primarily deciduous
forest; in between, in Maritime Canada and northern New England, there is a transition zone characterized by a
mixture of coniferous and deciduous species dependent on variations in the local elevation, soil type, and cli-
matic conditions. This is the New England/Acadian Forest type alluded to in Longfellow's poem.
New England/Acadian Forest
The New England/Acadian Forest is the largest ecoregion bordering the Atlantic coast within the temperate
broadleaf and mixed forest biome, and despite four hundred years of alteration in the wake of European settle-
ment, it is also the most intact.
Although this New England/Acadian Forest region includes many thousands of kilometers of coastline, the
region does not have a typical maritime climate, largely because the prevailing winds are westerly, blowing off
the continent. Even so, along the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Bay of Fundy, and Nova Scotia's Atlantic shore, the
climate is somewhat moderated by the closeness of the Atlantic Ocean, where the Gulf Stream exerts its moist,
warming influence, resulting in milder winters and cooler summers than in the center of the continent. Because
the entire region is peninsular, the influence of the ocean is felt for 200 kilometers (125 miles) inland.
